


Abaddon

by scalpelink



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23388958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scalpelink/pseuds/scalpelink
Summary: It's not forgiveness, but it's a start.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 3
Kudos: 62





	Abaddon

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I don't know. It has been an eternity since I have written anything. Overriding themes were too much to ask, apparently.  
> Also, I haven't watched the show since waaay back, so please forgive anything terribly incongruent.

After the day, light was an intruder. Lena’s hand fell away from the switch and her apartment remained in darkness. She knew her way well enough; too well, given how fast she was able to pour herself a glass of something caustic.

Every part of her ached. Her muscles were pulled taught over her bones and still tremoring to control the urge to run. Her head screamed at the pressure inside it. Still it was crunching numbers and moving pieces on a board. Today had just been the breaking wave. Tomorrow there would be the fallout. After that was too much for even Lena to comprehend.

She counted herself lucky. She had not been at the event horizon. She was nowhere near danger at any point in the cataclysm. To put herself there would have been callous and nothing but hubris. She was not Maxwell Lorde and would not flock to peril because of the ‘optics’ of handing out water bottles to people who were now naked and homeless. Instead she commanded the resources she had from an L-Corp turned into a military command centre.

Lena sank into a chair. Her glass was empty and her throat burned but it was welcome. When she closed her eyes, she could still see the light. The supernova. The flare that was so bright and powerful she could not understand how anyone was still alive to remember it. The sound that followed had ripped a primal fear out of her gut. Only later had she registered the blood in her ear.

It was a chemical explosion. An accident. Rationally, she knew the reactive properties of caesium, but the magnitude was unbearable. A whole section of National City had been vaporised. Hundreds of thousands of heartbeats had blinked out of existence in less than a breath. After the explosion there had been a suffocating vacuum of terrible silence. It gnawed her insides even now.

National City’s emergency services rallied heroically. The news feeds were filled with desperate firefighters, paramedics, and every-day citizens combating the tragedy. Lena had thrown every resource she had to bear at the emergency. She had opened hotels to be used as triage centres and places for the homeless to take shelter. She had organised resources from out-of-city and repurposed every asset she had that might prove useful.

Lena was not a frontline fighter but she was a woman with means, and those means accorded her responsibility.

Amongst the chaos, Lena had only been able to think of one person. One woman. She thought herself a monster for being able to think of anything but the enormity of loss the city was now faced with. But every time she glanced at the news or looked out over the smoking horizon, Lena searched for her. Supergirl was their talisman. Everyone looked to her in times of crisis. It was only Lena that looked for her constantly.

From time zero, Kara had been there. She started the day a glowing paragon of hope but as losses climbed high, Lena saw the breakdown of a hero into a desperate guerrilla fighter. The worst was to see her on her knees, too ruined to cry, staring into the abyss of a tragedy that not even a god could undo.

Once the worst of the fire was under control, Lena had finally let herself be forced from the fight. There would be work enough tomorrow. There would be work for months, no doubt. It made no sense to sprint when faced with a marathon but it did little to bury the guilt. That was what the alcohol was for.

She thought about calling someone. Anyone. Anything to avoid going to bed and facing hours of dreadful silence. Sam would no doubt answer, as would Jack. Lena knew even her mother would answer if she dared call. Would Kara answer her, she wondered. With Kara she would not even need to say anything. It would be enough to share the moment, no matter the distance, and exist in the security of some constants being immutable.

Lena knew what it was to be lonely. Intimately. It had been a constant of her entire life. Now she feared it more than anything but was too afraid to reach out and find more nothingness.

Another drink disappeared as soon as it was poured. Lena hovered at the cabinet, debating a third. She could lose herself in alcohol and the consequences would almost be nil. The cost of reaching out, especially to the wrong person, would be incalculable.

“Don’t.”

Lena did not dare turn. The voice was rough and strained but there was no mistaking it. She screwed her eyes tightly shut, as if willing away a dream. A nightmare. She ached for Kara to be real and she feared it more than anything she had endured that day.

Turning toward the balcony was the worst decision. It was her only choice.

Kara was framed in the strained moonlight. Supergirl, brought low. Her shoulders were bent. One hand was against the door frame. She was breathing hard through a grimace.

Lena swallowed the ire in her throat. It churned unpleasantly with the whiskey. “What are you doing here?”

Kara heaved herself forward. A blackened handprint stained the wall. Lena smelt it then; the stench of the fight she had been so far from. Kara reeked of ash, of sweat, of drying blood and the hopes of any reprieve dying in agonised screams. Worst was the horror in Kara’s eyes. She had seen all the things that Lena only saw in nightmares.

“I needed-” Kara swallowed. She was close. The stink was nigh-unbearable. She spoke in a growl. “I wanted to-”

The details of her resolved over seconds as Lena adjusted to the dark. Her hair was blackened through and the strands were matted together. Dried blood crusted around her nose. Her lips were cracked. The skin of her neck was blistered and peeling. When she raised a trembling hand to Lena’s face, she saw the broken nails and bleeding fingers.

The sun had truly died that day.

“You’re hurt,” Lena said, barely able to speak at all. Her eyes were burning. Her nose. Unwilling she was assaulted by the images of Kara choking on smoke as she pulled the helpless from the wreckage; staying her ground even as fire ate the skin from her bones.

“You’re safe,” Kara said. Tears tracked through the ash on her face.

Beyond the grief, and there was anguish so heavy that it would no doubt leave permanent scars, Lena saw rage. She saw a god, but not the benevolent one that she was accustomed to. She saw a destroyer. A dark, chaotic deity that could so easily rend worlds. Lena looked her in the eye and saw the world – her world – undone in her wrath at so much injustice. Lena almost wanted to let her loose. Someone had to answer for so much needless suffering. She was cognisant enough to know that she was not above bloody vengeance.

In a heartbeat, Kara was back. “I’m sorry,” she said. She looked away briefly, as if shamed. “I shouldn’t have just barged in. I just… I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m okay,” Lena said. Kara’s hands were trembling against Lena’s hips.

All at once their history was dwarfed by the day’s events. Lena felt infinitesimally small. Almost petty. Something as small – as monumental – as a name, had sundered the best friendship she had ever had. It had murdered something else, too. Something small and precious that Lena had never managed to give a name to.

Nameless, it nevertheless hung between them. It settled in the shuddering of Kara’s fingers as they folded into Lena’s blouse. It was in the rage cooling in Kara’s eyes and the longing of her breath. For Lena it raced across her skin and kicked fretfully against her ribs. It was a butterfly in a jar, aching for freedom.

“Don’t hurt me,” Lena said. “Not again.”

Kara keened. A cry died in her throat. “I didn’t.. I didn’t mean to. Lena.. I’m so-”

Lena pressed a finger to Kara’s mouth. The tremors that were just in Kara’s hands now rippled through her whole body. Lena had not meant to say anything of the hurt still festering in her heart but she had even less desire to hear Kara apologise for something that, in truth, did not need forgiveness.

Two distinct paths stretched out for Lena in the moment Kara looked at her; into her. The first, she could look away. She could push Kara’s hands from her body and heart, and they would go on as things already were. Perhaps one day they would be friends, but nothing like they had been. Nothing like what they could be.

The other option was to pull Kara closer. Love would not conquer their hurt. Love would not cure Lena of her bloodlust or Kara of her pride. It would simply be an open door. The veil lifted for an ephemeral moment. It was a chance at hope borne of ashes. Only, to take solace in that compassion, it would first mean admitting Lena had been wrecked.

Lena seized her. She gripped Kara’s neck, spared a flash of regret for Kara’s hiss of pain, and kissed her. It was artless and savage but Kara met her for every inch and it was perfect. Kara’s vestigial strength came to bear. The drinks’ cabinet took the brunt of it.

Kara tasted of ash. Destruction. Fire lingered on her skin. Lena let it burn away the torment that had not let her be, even for a moment.

Kara’s fingers seized Lena’s hair. A glass smashed on the floor. Kara was panting. Her lips were kiss-swollen and deep red. Her eyes were black, burning fire at the edges. Lena’s god was back. Her deity that walked in light as much as shadow. Abaddon, the destroyer, was on her knees and waiting on the whim of a mortal.

Lena wondered, as she took Kara for her own irrevocably, who the real destroyer was. The god?

Or the mortal who claimed her…?


End file.
